Metro Early College High School Summer Intern with OSU Welding Engineering

My name is Connor, and I have been working as an intern in the Welding Engineering department at The Ohio State University this summer. I am currently a student at Metro Early College High School.

During the school year, I had an internship at Battelle under a Materials Engineer/Tribologist there, Dr. Merriman, and he was the one who originally got me interested in Materials and Welding Engineering — before him, I didn’t even know it was a field of engineering. I then found out about the internship opportunity the Welding Engineering department offered through my FIRST Robotics Team’s Coach, Dr. Bruening. I was very interested because I had previously been exposed to this field of engineering.

After some interviewing, I got the position and started working under two graduate research associates, Jansen Lenzo and Michael Orr. I have been studying solidification cracking in nickel and cobalt based alloys in addition to high manganese steel. Day to day I bounce between preparing metal samples, working with microscopes, compiling data and observations, and studying/discussing welding engineering concepts. Before this internship, I was dead set on doing Aerospace Engineering, because for the last two years I have been the Lead Designer/CAD Guru on my Robotics Team. But, welding engineering has proven to be a grand slam of every field of science I have come to enjoy.

I really love my job, the community at the welding engineering department is fantastic and the experience and information I have gathered here is invaluable. Michael and Jansen are real all-star mentors and it has been awesome to have two people so dedicated to promoting my ambitions and accelerating my career. I would recommend this opportunity to any other young engineer.

Go Buckeyes!

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Welding Internship in Agriculture

Renae tells about her summer internship working in the manufacturing arena of Welding Engineering in agriculture.

This summer I’m interning at AGCO in their manufacturing center in Jackson, Minnesota. I’m having a wonderful time and really enjoying the area. Jackson itself only has about 3000 people but I’m renting a place about a half hour away, a very nice little house right by a lake. The people here are the friendliest I’ve ever encountered who really, REALLY enjoy their fishin’ and grillin’ (which I should probably get into because they definitely like talking about it) .  Southwestern Minnesota is a bit of a culture shock coming from Columbus, but overall I’m enjoying the change of scenery.

 

At AGCO I’m interning under the welding engineering department, which makes up a huge portion of an agriculture equipment plant. With a high rate of production needed, GMAW is by far the most used process, operating under both manual welders and also robotic/automation welding.

I’m dealing mostly with the manual welding aspect, but later on I will be shown the ins and outs of particular robots in the factory and then given a project to create some programs for them.  My major project has been creating weld sequences for the manual welders to follow using Miller Axcess machines. I do this by either creating the welds in a 3D modeling program or recording the process with pictures/videos.  This sequencing makes the weld process more efficient  by creating consistency, tracking weld time/data, and allowing new welders to adapt to the process more quickly. I really enjoy this because I get to work both with computer software and be on the factory floor.

On top of this I also get quite a bit of hands-on welding experience as they have a training area I’m free to use (which I’ve definitely taken advance of). 

 

Definitely enjoying my time here! 

Welding in Industrial Biosciences

We’ve been on hiatus during a busy academic year.
Highlights of 2013-2014 in OSU Welding Engineering:

• More than 100 prospective students, alumni, and current students’ parents attended our March Welding Engineering Open House.
• Sixty new sophomore Welding Engineering majors were accepted in January, beginning their first major classes.
• We said “congrats” and “good-bye” to a fine group of seniors in May who now are off to new careers or graduate school.
• The juniors finished WE core courses, and are spending their summers in required industrial or research internships.

Often new Welding Engineering majors are able to secure summer internships, too.  Here, rising junior Sam tells what he’s been up to in Vonore, TN, where he is interning at Dupont Industrial Biosciences.

They’re keeping me quite busy at Dupont in Vonore!

I’ve got a huge project related to corrosion control that is focused on inspecting critical equipment during a shutdown this summer. Additionally, I’ll help develop a company code, procedure qualification record, and welder qualification for sanitary/hygienic welding.

Since the field is industrial bioscience, it doesn’t have to be food/agricultural-quality welding, but it isn’t lenient either. I’ll be balancing out the available codes to create a sort of in-between standard. On the side I’ve also helped with welding-related questions that aren’t already answered by the welding authorities there.

So far I’m very pleased with the work, and am quite glad that I chose the field I’m in right now. My supervisors are impressed at the rate I’m progressing through the projects and at the leadership I demonstrated earlier this week in identifying a welding safety risk that may not have been fully considered. The risk was UV light from TIG welding bouncing off polished surfaces behind welders and then entering their masks and reflecting into the eyes from the interior face shield. The only reason I knew about this was Larry Heckendorn’s excellently thorough teaching of the WeldEng 3601 course.

 

Great internship at Greatbatch

Welding Engineering senior Jacob spent his summer at an internship with a medical device company.  Here is his report.

Over the summer of 2013, I participated in a welding engineering internship program in Buffalo, New York, with Greatbatch Medical.  The scope of products there range from batteries used in medical devices, drilling rigs, in NASA designs, to catheters and orthopedic implants. In the Buffalo facilities, batteries, capacitors, medical devices, and feedthroughs are the main focus.

Welding processes incorporated here are ultrasonic, laser, and small scale resistance welding.  Additionally, some brazing has been applied to certain projects.  Materials used in the various products include titanium, molybdenum, aluminum, stainless steel, nickel, platinum, gold, and lithium.

For my major project I was able to work on a scanning electron microscope (SEM) for microstructure analysis and composition mapping.  I found the exposure to these exotic materials and complex processes very interesting.  My co-workers were both knowledgeable and very friendly, helping me through whatever was necessary in my projects.

 

Domo arigato: robotics Colorado

Dan is a 2013 OSU Welding Engineering graduate who moved to Ft. Collins, Colorado, to start his Welding Engineering career at Wolf Robotics.  There, he joins recent OSU WE alumni Jared and Adam.

The transition from being a student to becoming an engineer has been pretty sweet. It was weird, at first, having all this free time with no homework or studying. I am glad I chose Wolf Robotics to be the place to start my career.

The people here are all pretty great, and I seem to fit in fine. The majority of my time has been spent training to ready me for on-site support at John Deere in Dubuque, Iowa. I have been sent to Lincoln Electric twice now for their Fanuc Robotics training classes. For my on-site support I am being relocated to Iowa for six months. The relocation is kind of a pain, but I’m excited to get the hands-on experience in a production atmosphere.

In addition to getting ready for relocation I am part a team putting together a capstone project for this year’s OSU Welding Engineering seniors. It is interesting being on the sponsor side of things and getting to see how much really goes into these projects. This is another experience I am glad to be a part of.

Dan loving the Colorado life

Moving to Colorado has also been pretty awesome. Having spent my entire life on the east side of the country, it has been a real eye-opener to what else is out there. Fort Collins is way smaller then Columbus, but there is always something to do.

I have been taking the dogs on hikes and swimming in the river, riding my bicycle all over, and when I just want to relax there are like 13 breweries in this town.

Interning at Swagelok

Reporting on his summer internship is third-year Welding Engineering student Emeric.

This summer, I am interning at Swagelok Company in Solon, Ohio. I chose to pursue an internship here after touring their facilities through the Spring Break Job Shadow Program through Ohio State’s Engineering Career Services.   Swagelok produces valves and fittings for fluid and gas distribution systems. I work in the Order Fulfillment Center of their High Purity Group, which focuses on manufacturing components and fittings used in the Semiconductor and Biopharmaceutical industries.

I work with my technical sponsors and shop floor supervisors on the following projects:

• Product Move: Analyze the prints and parts of components to determine what assemblies can be moved from a single lathe to a dual lathe weld cell. This requires me to not only develop tooling and parameters, but also an understanding of the products we make and how they are assembled.
• Weld Wire Handling Documentation: Write standard work and add material certifications to databases. Assignment involves working with a lot of different departments (scheduling, warehouse, receiving, product engineering, and assembly engineering) in terms of how they handle weld filler material and stay in compliance with industry codes and standards.
• Inner Diameter Purge Improvement: Implementation of an improved ID purge system to ensure a clean and consistent weld bead profile. This includes installation, testing, and training associates on the new system.

Overall, my experience this summer has met and exceeded my expectations. Swagelok Company did an extraordinary job of giving me a great welding engineering experience. Not once did I feel like the projects were busy work, and I could actually see results as I work on them. All projects are very related to welding engineering and exposed me to facets of engineering I often overlook, such as personal communications skills and adapting to a production environment.

Welding Engineering Students who are interested in working for Swagelok Company should visit the career section of their website at http://www.swagelok.com/careers.aspx

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California Dreamin’ – Summer Internship at SpaceX

Last winter the department received an email from Kristen, a 2012 Welding Engineering alumna working at SpaceX, who wanted to know if there were any Welding Engineering juniors interested in doing their summer internship in California and working on some projects with her and with Jon, another OSU WeldEng alumnus.  It didn’t take long for Bob to submit his application and get hired for the gig.   Here is an update on his experiences so far.

It is extremely exciting to work for a company like SpaceX that is at the forefront of commercial space flight, and that has tremendous goals like colonizing Mars.  SpaceX has high expectations of its interns, so I get to do worthwhile work that will benefit me greatly in my career. Also, SpaceX uses technologies and materials that are at the cutting edge of industry. I get to work with processes like electron beam welding, friction stir welding, robotic tig and mig welding, as well as with materials like titanium, Ni-based alloys, and niobium alloys. It’s an opportunity I wouldn’t have had at another internship.

Jon, Kristen, & Bob at SpaceX

SpaceX is trying to increase production so they can increase the number of launches per year.  In order to do that the manufacturing processes have to be made more efficient, and welding is a huge part of the manufacturing.  If you need a welding engineer you come to OSU.  Two of the engineers working on welding here are Kristen and Jon, both OSU WE alums.  When they needed an intern, Kristen contacted OSU to find one, and I guess I qualified and did enough to convince them that I could do the job.

A number of my Welding Engineering courses directly relate to what I am doing at SpaceX.  Some of my responsibilities include qualifying welding procedures, so I do some metallurgy work which we learned about in the Materials and Processing Lab. The Welding Engineering Design courses addressed maximum allowable heat inputs allowed, as well as the codes necessary to understand what is required in a Welding Procedure Specification and supporting Procedure Qualification Records.  Other classes have aided in my understanding of how to evaluate a weld procedure and to improve upon it.  I’ve had to teach myself a lot of what will go on in Welding Metallugy II, but Dr.  Lippold’s stainless steel and Nickel-based alloy text books have come in very handy.

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Summer Circuits

Incoming OSU Welding Engineering freshman Sam is getting excited for classes to start in a few weeks.  This summer, he’s been working two jobs, including an internship at OSU’s ElectroScience Lab.

As part of the project I’m working on there, I obtained a radio assembly kit online and put it together in order to experience the process of miniaturizing an antenna. Much as the name suggests, it is simply making the antenna smaller and more efficient; however, the process can be quite difficult, mainly because of impedance matching. I have learned an incredible amount about antennas and electrical engineering as a whole in the process, but fear not, I am still set on majoring in welding engineering.

AM-FM Radio built by Sam, working on miniaturizing the antenna

About the picture, it’s a front view of the AM/FM radio I built, with all the components visible. It took about 16 hours and 300+ solders, but after all the testing and assembly, it turned out amazing and works quite well!

 

Good to hear from you, Sam!  What a great start to your OSU experience.

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It’s a good day to be a welding engineer!

Successful SpaceX Launch, 22 May 2012

Report from 2011 OSU Welding Engineering graduate Kristen, who was hired just 2 months ago at SpaceX in Hawthorne, California, just outside of Los Angeles.

As a sophomore switching into the Welding Engineering program at OSU, I never imagined that three years later I would be part of something incredible, with nationwide acclaim. But here I am – working at SpaceX, who just this morning on May 22, 2012, started the journey to making history by conducting a successful launch of our Falcon 9 rocket and deployment of the Dragon spacecraft. This will, hopefully, help us to become the first commercial company to berth to and deliver cargo to the International Space Station by the end of the week!

As a new member of the Propulsion Manufacturing Engineering group, I have not contributed to any of the parts on this flight, but I still get to enjoy the wonderful result of the hard work of many of the other dedicated SpaceXers.

Being a part of something this unique and incredible has given me an entirely new outlook on my job – as one of the NASA executives put it early this morning after our successful launch, “this is what makes aerospace employees want to come to work everyday.”

We work long hard hours, and we deal with a lot of frustration (buildings rockets is not easy!!), but guess what – all those welds, on which our welding engineers spent thousands of hours developing and ensuring that they were great?

They all did their job! And with the thousands of other things that were labored over by other hard-working SpaceX employees, we launched a rocket.

How about that?! It’s a good day to be a welding engineer!!

Congratulations, SpaceX, and good luck, Kristen!

Spring Break – all fun and games

Spring Break: a time for sun and fun and total relaxation away from schoolwork, right?  Here’s how one of our Welding Engineering majors spent his.

Report and photos from Jake, 2nd-year OSU Welding Engineering Major:

OSU Buck-I-Serv group a Camp Baker

Over the Spring break I went with a group of OSU students on a Buck-I-Serv trip to Richmond, Virginia.
For 7 days we volunteered and lived at Camp Baker, aiding individuals with intellectual disabilities such as autism, cerebral palsy, Asperger syndrome, Down syndrome, and a variety of other disorders. The camp supervisors, caretakers, and the camp nurse taught us a lot about the disorders of the campers with whom we did crafts and physical activities.

Jake and a camper getting ready for some March Madness.

From the Buck-I-Serv website: Buck-I-Serv is The Ohio State University’s alternative break program that sends students across the country over winter, spring and summer break to volunteer on a variety of social issues. All trips are substance free and offer students the chance to not only learn about the social issues their trip is addressing, but immerse themselves in a first hand experience to better their understanding of the issue at large.

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